This past Friday evening I met with the cell leaders of the family cells to discuss how we will arrange the cells for those who will worship at Wimbledon and who will worship in London. This was especially needed because we have two new cell leaders starting this term. We now have 10 family cell groups and 31 cell groups all together. Although we have fewer members than before, if you just look at the number of cell groups, it’s almost the same as before the pandemic.
During the pandemic when I prayed about starting a worship service south of London, because the church population had shrunk a lot, I told God that it would be good “when the London church sanctuary was about full.” God answered that prayer. In addition, the church’s financial situation is better than before, so God made it that we don’t need to worry about the expenses that we will incur through opening a second worship service. During the pandemic, we also added a production team and homeless ministry and when we start worship services in Wimbledon, we will need teams there so the church’s ministry is slowly getting bigger and bigger. God is really pouring out his grace on us when we need it and is leading us faithfully.
The thing that I thought about the most when considering opening a worship service in Wimbledon was Sunday School. Most families with children live south of London so the teachers need to leave earlier than usual to go down to Wimbledon and then come back to London to join the worship service at 2pm. Additionally, because some families with children live in or nearer to London than to Wimbledon, Sunday School in London is needed as well. Even though there may not be many families with children living in London, in the long-term families with children in London will continue to join our church so I think it’s right to have Sunday School there, too. So, Sunday School needed to be divided in two and thankfully the teachers understood the church’s situation and banded together.
Another concern that I had was that there aren’t many children who will attend the Sunday School in the city so maybe they would feel lonely or discouraged. In order to make a class with a sufficient number of students, we decided to combine Sunday School for the younger two age groups. In the case of the oldest age group, there are only 5 students and some live north of London while some live south of London. With only 5 students it was difficult to divide into two, so we needed the cooperation of the parents to be able to meet in one place. All of the parents thought of the students and of other families’ needs above their own convenience.
Opening a new worship place in the south, from the view of the church, is something to be very thankful for but when it finally comes around to setting it up there are a lot of things to think about and a lot of commitment and sacrifice needed from many different people. It’s similar to the joy that comes with the birth of a child, but also the great sacrifice that comes with its care. But our church members, for the joy of the birth of this child, willingly decided to roll up their sleeves and devote themselves to the cause. Seeing all of this I thought to myself that this really is a good church and that our church members really love the church. I thought about how happy I was as a pastor of these saints and even though there are a lot of things to take care of, I was able to have a thankful heart because God is leading us every step. Because it is just the start, there may be difficulties ahead, but I trust God and our church members.
